


Nothing ever smells of roses

by A_Diamond



Series: New York Fairytale [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Drug Addiction, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, M/M, New Year's Eve, Relapsing, Tumblr: deancas-sweetheart, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 13:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9734366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Diamond/pseuds/A_Diamond
Summary: It’s going well, until it isn’t. Dean knows how addiction works, how addicts work, but he still somehow expects it to be different with Cas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Why Do You Love Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcrv9nhH9iY).

Cas’s first relapse happens on New Year’s Eve.

He’s been staying with Mary, because she has a guest bed in the room where Sam and Dean grew up. Because she’s retired and can keep on eye on him, nurse him through withdrawals. Because he’s one of her boys and she loves him despite the years and the damage. Because when he tried to leave after Christmas breakfast with a wave and _I’ll see you around, maybe_ , she stopped Dean from blustering about handcuffing him to the radiator.

Dean would have done it, laws against false imprisonment notwithstanding. He’s nowhere near objective when it comes to Cas, not now that he’s finally got him back. Not even if it means ruining his career and his life. He knew that the moment he found Cas in lockup, and nothing’s changed since then to suggest he’s any more ready for logic. He jumps back and forth between wanting to force Cas to rehab, to therapy, to get better no matter what the cost in money and hatred, and wanting to give Cas anything—space, freedom, drugs, _anything_ —to keep him from running away again. That’s another reason Cas is staying with Mary, and not with him.

New Year’s Eve is the first time Dean of allowed to visit. Sure, it was only a few days since Christmas, but he was antsy for all of them, restless at home and bordering on distracted at work. Mary gave him updates on Cas’s withdrawal symptoms, but Cas didn’t want him there for it. Dean kind of understood that, even if he hated it; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle being there.

But the end of the year get together is another Winchester tradition, so Dean arrives at his mom’s apartment just before nine with a bottle of non-alcoholic cider and bright pink bakery box. The apple tarts inside are the best in Brooklyn—the best in all of New York, really—and priced accordingly. He only treats himself, and his family, once a year, and he’s looking forward to sharing them with Cas, who’d loved apple pie when they were kids.

Dean hopes he still does.

Only, when Dean gets there, his mom blocks his way in with the look on her face that means she thinks she needs to stop him from doing something dumb. Over her shoulder, he can see that the door to his room—Cas’s room, for now—is closed.

“Mom,” he starts. but she doesn’t let him finish.

“He’s just having a hard day,” she says, even though she looks just as tired as she was twenty years ago trying to balance work and grief and two kids. She barely slept back then, a few hours at a time at best. Just enough to keep her functional for all her responsibilities. It wasn’t until they were older, Dean able to take care of himself and help out with Sammy, that he remembered what she looked like without bags under her eyes.

“What happened?”

“Trouble sleeping. Nightmares, cramps. He finally seems to be getting some rest, though.”

Dean looks at the closed door again. Hesitates. “Should I go?”

Mary’s smile is sweet despite her exhaustion. “He should be fine as long as we keep it quiet. You still owe me an apple tart, don’t think you can get away with keeping them all to yourself.”

{}

The night goes well for a few hours. Sam and Sarah show up, fancy cheeses and meats in hand. The four of them eat and chat—quietly, not wanting to wake Cas—and wait for Mary’s old CRT TV to show them Times Square.

The countdown’s only reached nine when Cas’s door cracks and he saunters out into the living room. It hits seven by the time Dean realizes Cas is high as a kite. His pupils fill just about his entire eye, black pits shying away from the bright television screen as he wishes them a too-loud happy new year. His energy is the wrong kind of manic for someone powering through without sleep; Dean’s seen and worked enough long shifts to know the difference.

He asks Cas’s heartbreaking grin, “What’d you take?” as Mary gets to her feet.

“Coke. It’s a party, isn’t it?” He says it like it’s obvious, like he’s got nothing to deny or be ashamed about. Like Dean’s been lying to himself, because five days of being dopesick isn’t sobriety; this doesn’t even count as a relapse, it’s just an addict getting a fix.

“It’s only been a few days,” Mary echoes his thoughts quietly. “It’s just a setback, that’s all. You guys should go, though.”

They’ve missed the ball dropping. It’s a new year. Cas starts 2017 with powder up his nose and Dean knows what he must have done to pay for it.

“Where the fuck did you even get cocaine?” he demands, but Cas just laughs.

Dean used to adore Cas’s laugh as much as he adored everything else about Cas fifteen years ago. His eyes would crinkle up and his mouth split wide to let the happy noise out. Childish giggles, in the early years, then something warmer and deeper after his voice cracked into manhood. No matter what he was laughing at, it always felt like an invitation for Dean to join in the joy.

Now it still looks the same—or as similar as it can on a grown man instead of a teenager—but the sound is a harsh, unpleasant crackle in the back of Cas’s throat. It sounds like he’s choking on it.

“Wherever the fuck I want. Welcome to New York, sweetheart.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Things actually go pretty well after that, though. Cas still refuses to go to treatment, even outpatient, but a week passes and he doesn’t use. Then another, and two more after that. He’s still staying with Mary, and god only knows what a retired cop and a retired prostitute do with themselves—probably way too much daytime television—but Dean starts going over for dinner once, then twice a week, and it’s nice.

It’s not perfect. Cas still has a lot of bad days, and he doesn’t eat with them just as often as he does. He’s mostly quiet when he is there, lets Dean and Mary carry the conversation with bullshit about work and Sam and politics. But he looks better: his cheeks a little less hollow, his flesh a little less grey.

Dean tries very hard not to think about how good stubble looks on him when it’s not part of an overall unbathed look. But Cas, whose sexuality has been on sale for the past eighteen years, notices. He bites his lip and stretches when he pushes back from the table, showing off an expanse of stomach that’s flat instead of concave.

He smirks a challenge when Dean forces his eyes back up to Cas’s face. Dean can feel the danger of the moment. He’s being tested and he doesn’t know the right answer, so he goes with the only one that feels safe: he flips Cas off.

“Dean Winchester!” Mary scolds, but Cas just chuckles like someday everything might be okay.

{}{}{}{}{}

It’s another Tuesday and Mary smiles as she opens the door. Claiming the bags of takeout Dean was ordered to bring, she nods her head upwards and says, “He’s on the roof.”

{}

Dean finds him in the same spot he did almost twenty-two years ago, sitting against the far wall of the elevator housing. Dean doesn’t trip over him this time, but he does stumble when Cas looks up because his lazy grin is the wrong kind of familiar. Fuck. Two and a half months, he thought... Well, hardly fucking matters what he thought.

“What’d you take?”

“Happy Valentine’s Day to you too, Dean.”

Cas’s black eye healed a while ago. A terrible part of Dean wants to give him another, but he knows, equally terribly, that it would only encourage the dead-eyed smirk Cas aims at him. He waits it out instead.

Unfortunately, Cas waits better than he does. Maybe he’s more patient in general—he always was when they were kids—but he also has the advantage of apparently being able to look up into Dean’s eyes without breaking in half the way Dean does the other way around.

“I thought it was going well,” says Dean, giving useless voice to his useless thought. “Why?”

Cas’s unnatural smile drops off, though he doesn’t look away. “Ariel sells her soul for a body she doesn’t even want, on the off chance a near-stranger might be pleased and love her more like that. Only when she gets to him, he doesn’t recognize her so he doesn’t want her. She’s already given up everything that connected her to her old life, so when he casts her aside and she tries to return to the sea, she just dissolves into foam.

“Your expectations are... exhausting, Dean.”

That hits hard. More unsteady than Cas’s unexpected high made him, Dean eases down to sit beside his friend and they stare out at the brownstones of Brooklyn together. Cas gives him the space to think, which is apparently more than he’s been giving Cas. If asked even a few minutes ago, he would have sworn he had no expectations of Cas. But he does.

He wants Cas to get better. He has definite ideas about what _better_ means, and just about all of them relate back to the boy who’d been his best friend. At their dinners, he’s happy when Cas reminds him of that boy and sad when Cas reminds him of the drug-addict prostitute he pulled out of booking. Of course Cas has noticed.

Cas has a lot of shit he needs to work through, but maybe Dean does, too.

“I think I used to be in love with you, you know.”

In the corner of Dean’s view, Cas turns to him again and raises his eyebrows.

“Yeah. That’s kind of the shit I’m talking about.”

Dean meets his gaze and smiles a little, feels like he might mean it for the first time in months. “I know. What I mean is, I get that it’s past tense. We’re not who we used to be. I’ve been so used to hanging on to the idea of you that—yeah. I can see what you mean. I’ll work on it.”

They sit side by side for long enough that the sun, low in the sky when Dean arrived, turns the sky gold as it flirts with the horizon.

“I could blow you if you want, though.”

Dean stands and offers Cas a hand up. “Not if a rattlesnake bit my dick and you were the last cocksucker in the world, sweetheart,” he lies.

It’s a good lie. Cas laughs instead of calling him on it, the sound closer to what it used to be but still jagged enough to ache. Dean pushes past it. No more comparisons, just Cas as he is.

“Poetic,” Cas says.

{}

The food’s cold when they get back. It still tastes like a new chance.


End file.
